


Flight Risk

by Akaihyou, GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaihyou/pseuds/Akaihyou, https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics
Summary: “Space… ate him,” Steve tells them.Steve tries to talk about whatreallyhappened on the Valkyrie.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26
Collections: Voiceteam 2020, Voiceteam 2020: Team Blue





	Flight Risk

Type | Link | Size | Length  
---|---|---|---  
  
**To Download:** Right click the link and choose save link as.  
  
MP3 | [[link to mp3]](https://archive.org/download/flight-risk/Flight%20Risk.mp3) | 7 MB | 0:09:05  
M4B |  [[link to m4b]](https://archive.org/download/flight-risk/Flight%20Risk.m4b)  
  
| 7 MB | 0:09:05  
  
Your browser doesn't support streaming with the HTML5 audio tag, but you can still [download this podfic](https://archive.org/download/flight-risk/Flight%20Risk.mp3).

“Space… ate him,” Steve tells them.

“You mean the cube consumed him.”

Steve grits his teeth. He understands the need to debrief him about what happened on the Valkyrie, but no one seems to be listening.

“No,” he repeats. “Schmidt dropped it when the universe reached out for a look at him, and then space _ate_ him.”

Fury regards him skeptically. “Say that’s even possible. Why did you survive?”

Shrugging, Steve says, “I was farther back in the plane. I don’t know why it didn’t take me too. Maybe because I’d had my brain rattled about too much to muster the same kind of fear.” Even remembering it now, the hair on his arms stands up a little. He can’t explain the sensation of space itself peering in at them. There had been… this sense of being barely noticed by some massive predator, the kind that would fool you into thinking being small and inconsequential should be some measure of defense, but it wasn’t, because the predator could reach out with part of itself, quick as a flash, and swallow you whole without bothering to chew.

Schmidt had been chewed a little. He’d had more immediate attention on him as well. Steve had merely been… lipped at, like a horse investigates a treat before using its teeth.

Steve shudders.

“So, the cube created a portal to… space…” says Fury, “and Schmidt was… pulled through.”

“Sure,” Steve says tiredly. No one, not even the director of SHIELD, believes him, but it was seventy years ago, somehow, so he supposes the details don’t matter so much now.

Blue and white and sea and sky and cloud blurring endlessly together, patchy and seamless and dizzying. Steve had tried to keep the plane forced down. He’d known, somehow, that leaving the plane wouldn’t help him. Eventually, the radio had worked and he’d been… released, if only for the few minutes it took to contact Peggy. He’d known the ocean was waiting. There was no other place to go. Steve and the Valkyrie were insignificant specks swiftly running out of time, but he’d had the feeling that, even if he had turned for land, he would never have reached it.

“Is Peggy alive?” Steve asks, cutting off Fury’s next question. He’s answered them all before.

* * *

Peggy _is_ alive. She’s the only one who is. She turns out to be in London, preparing to move to an… _assisted living_ facility in DC, closer to her remaining family, and not coincidentally, closer to Steve.

Desperate for… something, Steve gets on a plane to go meet her. He can help her pack and maybe see some of peace-time London.

He spends the entire flight with the window pulled down and his head tucked into his arms, not quite bracing himself for… something. The SHIELD agent sent to escort him gives up trying to talk to him an hour in. The sounds of the modern airplane are different. Steve is grateful, but the staticky hum and constant vibration fill him up until he feels like his body and the entire plane will rattle apart to tumble endlessly through the open air until the air and the ocean and his breath in his ears are all one.

They land, eventually. The wind must have been against them, the agent says. DC to London is usually less than seven and a half hours.

When they disembark in a private airfield, Steve stumbles out to find the sky full of dim stars. The rail creaks in his grasp as he tells himself he isn’t about to fall away from the earth. Forcing his gaze below the horizon, he shivers and tries not to think of the hungry void he can never again think of as the heavens.

* * *

Steve finds Peggy old and frail, but remarkably unchanged… until she forgets his arrival between pouring tea and going to her kitchen for biscuits. She drops the plate in shock and then proceeds to rage and weep at him for driving the plane into the sea. He understands why she has to move to DC better now, but this is _Peggy_ , so he repeats his explanations for what must be at least the twenty-fifth time since he woke up.

“There was no other choice,” Steve says, and it’s not the first time he’s said those words, but there must be something different in _how_ he’s said them, because Peggy stops and really looks at him.

“Tell me again,” she demands.

He does the best he can, but he can’t find all the words.

After he’s silent, Peggy says, “You can’t tell anyone else at SHIELD. SHIELD doesn’t believe in sectioning their agents, but it won’t go well for you.”

“So I noticed,” he says and thinks of the alarm when he described Schmidt as being eaten. He doesn’t ask what sectioning means, but from context he assumes it involves either punishment or some sort of asylum, and not the kind that means _safety_.

“How long are you staying in London?” she asks abruptly.

“As long as you are,” he promises. “I’m not gonna go until you do.”

She exhales. “Very well. I wish you wouldn’t, but…” She scribbles something on the corner of a page of The Sunday Times and tears it off to hand to him. “If you need to talk about it, I think you’re strong enough.”

This seems like a strange thing to say, but Steve has been promised _therapists_ already, by SHIELD.

“The Magnus Institute?” he reads, and hears his own reluctance.

Peggy’s laugh is a little dark. “No, darling. It’s not a psychiatric institute, and if SHIELD has to know you told them your story, I can promise you SHIELD will have bigger problems.”

* * *

Case 0122304. Steven Rogers. Incident took place onboard HYDRA leader Johann Schmidt's bomber the Valkyrie in early 1945. Statement given 23rd of April, 2012. Gertrude Robinson recording...

**Author's Note:**

> For the Space Theme Anthology by Blue Team Bleu for Voiceteams 2020


End file.
